Death of Kings

by Philip Gooden

  I mean, would you believe a word of it? I wouldn’t.

  I went round in circles, with my allegiances and obligations tangled together so tight that it would have taken a smarter head than mine to unravel them. The only thing that was clear was that I was expected to call at Essex House on the next Sunday morning. Perhaps it would be a quiet day in the old hotbed, just the odd Puritan spouting and the occasional malcontent ranting but no one actually doing anything. But what was to be my pretext? Nemo hadn’t told me that. I’d have to trust to luck and quick wits if I was once again stopped at the postern by Signor Noti.

  I blew out the candle and lay down on my lumpy bed. It was freezing. I shivered and pulled over my head the mixture of blankets and stinking animal skins (no doubt the remains of their sacrificial rites) which the Coven had thoughtfully provided for my nocturnal comfort. After a while I realised that I was still clutching Nemo’s note. It was a perilous piece of paper, too perilous to be seen by the eye of morning. If the candle had been alight I would have burned it to ashes. As it wasn’t, I had to obey Nemo’s final injunction and eat his words. They tasted as bitter as ashes and for some time after I’d swallowed his secrets I seemed to feel them, a mushy bolus, lodged in my windpipe.

  We rarely held meetings in the Chamberlain’s. We were, in a sense, meeting all the time, we ordinary players. The day-to-day business of the Company was in the hands of the Burbage brothers and the major shareholders such as Shakespeare and Phillips and Heminges. They commissioned or bought new work and decided what plays would be put on and when, they handled negotiations with the Office of the Revels and dealt with licences and, most important, with the finances. Individuals such as the Tire-man or the Book-keeper had their little kingdoms, with that inclination towards tyrannous rule which seems to characterise small rulers, but the management of the Globe in all its fullness and roundness was firmly in the hands of a few.

  It was something of a surprise therefore when word came through from Dick Burbage that he wanted to speak to the entire company at the ungodly hour of nine on a February Friday morning. This was a couple of days after my excursion to Essex House and the dire events of that night. In my imagination, I repeated and re-repeated my walk in the dark down Broadwall. And when I thought about it, which was much of the time, I could feel still the weight and form of a dead man hanging on my back. So, in a way, I welcomed any distraction, including an early morning meeting.

  It was too cold to assemble in the open on the stage and since the only room large enough to hold all the members of the company was the tire-house, it was there that we were summoned. There was a queer expectation in the air, half excitement, half apprehension. I was standing with the two Jacks – Horner and Wilson – and our boy-player Martin Hancock. Needless to say, I had said nothing to Jack about his wife’s behaviour. In fact, I would have gone to great lengths to protect my friend from the knowledge of Isabella’s vicious duplicity. I was dreading another visit by her to the Globe, although they had been infrequent of late. How does one converse with someone who has attempted by violent stealth to cut one’s mortal thread? The ordinary small change of discourse seems somehow inadequate. Therefore I hoped not to see her again, or at least not see her until our current crisis had passed and I could turn my mind to how best to deal with Mistress Horner. Glancing round the tire-house now, I saw the faces that had become familiar over the last few months, the senior men like Cowley and Pope and the more junior ones such as Cook and Rice.

  That this was a significant occasion was indicated by the presence on a make-shift platform at the end of the room of the Burbage brothers, Richard and Cuthbert, together with the senior players William Shakepeare and Augustine Phillips. Seeing Master WS reminded me that I hadn’t passed on to him the message from Henry Wriothesley. I hadn’t really had the opportunity but neither had I sought for one. This playing at Mercury was becoming wearisome – and probably dangerous, if recent nights were anything to go by.

  I had never before attended a meeting at which the Chamberlain’s Company had been so formally called together. After a moment, and without a signal from anyone, the buzz of conversation died down. Dick Burbage, who had been deep in dialogue with WS, turned towards us and began to speak. They always said that Dick was a Proteus, able to take on any role – able to become any role – someone who submerged himself in his part before the play began and surfaced for air only when disrobing after the action was finished. I would not have dared to approach him while he was off-stage during a performance, and I’d noticed that even the more important members of the Company had only the briefest exchanges with him at such times. To every part that he played he brought a physical attack, hard or insinuating, as if he would make it his by seizure or seduction. Now he played at being the responsible manager and shareholder, always conscious that the well-being of his beloved Company rested in his hands. Or perhaps he really was the responsible manager, etc. It’s easy enough when an actor’s on stage because you know he must be playing but when he’s off, how can you tell what he’s feeling?

  “Friends and fellow players,” Burbage began, perhaps in deliberate echo of Mark Antony’s opening words in WS’s Julius Caesar as he speaks to the crowd over the corpse of his precious Caesar, “friends . . . I have summoned you here this early in the morning for no idle purpose. I say I but I mean, of course, Cuthbert and William and Augustine and the rest of the shareholders. We have called this unusual meeting. Now, we may be mere players, but we are players near the heart of things. In the last few years we have played at the royal court more than twice as often as another company which I will not name [he meant Henslowe’s Admiral’s men]. Our sovereign has been pleased not merely to grace our performances but to compliment us on them in the warmest terms. We are her men in all but name.”

  So far, so unexceptionable. Around me I sensed the beginnings of bewilderment: why have they called us together? Surely not just to say that we’re the Queen’s favourites? We know that. Stale news. As if sensing the mood of the Company, Dick Burbage continued:

  “This you know well. Long may we continue to be the favourites of Queen Elizabeth. Long may she continue to reign over us! [A few murmurs of assent at this point, but for form’s sake only.] However, if it behoves every man to think of the future, how much more does it behove every group of men allied together for mutual benefit – as we are allied – to arm itself against ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ [here he nodded slightly at Master WS in acknowledgement of his words]. In short, we have to look out for ourselves. To be on the watch for new patrons and friends. I do not have to tell you, my friends, how precarious is the life of the player.

  “We have only recently attained respectability. And always our enemies, Puritans and the like, are seeking to thrust us back onto the high-roads and inn-yards, if not into the ditch where they think we belong. We have other enemies too that I scarcely need to enumerate. A cold spell keeps people indoors, the bear-baiting draws away their pennies, while an outbreak of the plague closes us down altogether. And even when we do succeed in gathering a congregation [this was Dick Burbage’s preferred term for the playhouse audience], gathering them in sufficient numbers, we must keep them diverted. If we fail to amuse them, my friends, then we too will shortly fail – fail to eat, fail to pay our rent, fail to feed our families. Ah, how precarious is the life of the player!”

  None of this was exactly new to the Company. I glanced at my companions, the Jacks and Martin. All of us were well aware of just how unstable our trade was, even in the finest, best-established of acting companies. Yet, such was Dick Burbage’s oratorical skill, that we listened to his words as if he were telling us great, unuttered truths. At the back of my mind, though, was the certainty that we hadn’t yet reached the heart of his speech, the real reason we’d been summoned to the tiring-house on a cold winter’s morning. Everything he’d said so far was a preparation for something that when it came wasn’t, I suspected, going to be entirely welcome. Other
wise, why was Dick making such a business of selling it to us?

  It came, sure enough:

  “As players we must look with favour on those who would favour us. We cannot afford to turn a cavilling, carping face to the world; rather we must show welcome both in eye and tongue. We have been requested to stage a special performance this Saturday afternoon, which will be advertised as usual and open to our public as usual, but for which we have been offered the sum of forty shillings extraordinary.”

  He paused. There were no gasps or whistles of amazement at this sum, for although it might have been ‘forty shillings extraordinary’ – that is, in addition to whatever receipts we might take at the door – it was hardly an extraordinary sum in itself. In fact, I calculated that it would have kept me going for less than two months in London, and that would be by living sparely. So, if it was to be shared out among the Company, forty shillings represented a thoroughly modest disbursement.

  “What’s this play then, Dick?” said someone, Thomas Pope I think. “It must be very special that we cannot just be told our parts but need to meet about it beforehand.”

  “It is one of our own,” said Burbage, again inclining his head in the direction of Master WS. “It is William’s Richard II that I am talking about.”

  “That old piece,” Jack Horner muttered next to me. His feeling was obviously shared by the majority of the Company, to judge by the shifting and stirring and muttering around us. I would probably have felt the same way, had I not been privy to the conversation between Sir Gelli Merrick and Augustine Phillips. That, together with Robert Cecil’s warning, had alerted me not only to the title of the play but also to its significance. In truth, this latter point was nothing very arcane. Very soon my fellows in the Company, or the quicker-witted among them, had grasped the meaning of a request for Richard II. I glanced at WS to see whether he was offended by comments about the fustiness or dustiness of his work; I wondered whether he would speak up on his own account. But he did nothing other than wear his usual bland expression.

  “A practical point, Dick,” said Pope, again. “You say that we’re being offered forty shillings extraordinary to put on a piece which – not to put too fine a point on it and saving your reverence, William – is a little musty. But in my view we’re likely to lose more than forty shillings when our regular customers stay away in droves. Why don’t we do something new, or at least do something not quite so old?”

  “Yes, and it may be more than the forty shillings we’ll lose,” said someone on the opposite side of the room. There was an agitated flurry at this point, since a consideration that most of us had been uneasily aware of was pushed to the forefront of our minds. Yes, we could lose in several ways: it would be bad enough to forfeit money rather than to make it, if we were fined by the Council; it would be yet worse if some of us lost our liberty, as a result of putting on a play which the Council would certainly frown at; and worse still, if some lost more than liberty . . .

  Several people turned in the direction of the last speaker, as if they expected him to enlarge on his remark. Dick Burbage was also looking towards him, giving him the chance to have his say. It was Richard Sincklo, a quiet and rather formal man.

  “Master Burbage, we all know that there are . . . reasons why this play of Richard should be requested at this time.”

  “Tell us them, Richard,” said Dick Burbage kindly but firmly, like a master to a pupil.

  “It deals with the . . . the death of kings. It shows a throne usurped, and the usurper triumphant. It shows that a sovereign may be deposed and then put to a violent death. These are nice subjects at this time. I think I do not have to expatiate further.”

  Now Master WS, he nodded slightly at Dick Burbage and stepped forward on the makeshift platform. This was his right – after all, it was his play that we were talking about. Who better to defend it? Unlike Burbage with his overmastering ‘attack’, WS had a softer approach. His voice and intonation still carried traces of country sweetness and simplicity. Or perhaps it was all an act.

  “Richard Sincklo, thank you for dealing so plain, as usual. No, you do not need to expatiate further. [I noticed that he did not take the opportunity to mock Richard Sincklo’s slightly formal ‘expatiate’, something a lesser man might have done. As ever, Master WS paid grave and good-humoured attention to what he heard] We all know what you are talking about, and these matters should be aired. You say that my Richard shows ‘a throne usurped’, you say it shows a ‘usurper triumphant’. So it does – or rather, so our History does. What I have recorded is what happened, happened once. And I ask you what became of the usurper, Henry Bolingbroke? For that is History too. Why, he lived as King Henry IV, and not so long after he ascended the throne he died of a sickness, and during his reign our kingdom was torn apart by inland wars and civil strife. This too I have recorded, as I think you know. [Appreciative laughter, for it was WS’s Henry IV that first offered to the world the indestructible figure of Falstaff and other riotous fellows.] Those plays about a usurper met with no little success, I think, even though I showed him dying in defeat and disillusion. The lessons that History teaches are not simple. Those who would treat them as an A-B-C primer may be fools. What I am saying, my friends, is that we must not think of our audience as fools.”

  Shakespeare paused here.

  “We are afraid of trouble now if we show a play about the death of a king. But I say to you: we are players first and foremost. Let those who wish to construe what they watch in a bad sense, do so. We are not guilty of their false assumptions and constructions. We are guilty of nothing, only of holding the mirror up to nature. If a man looks in the glass and doesn’t like what he sees, then the fault – and the remedy – lies with him.”

  “What if he goes and smashes the glass, William?” shouted out Thomas Pope. “What then? You know how costly a glass is, how difficult it may be to replace.”

  “More fool him,” said WS, easily equal to this elaboration of his original ‘glass’ metaphor; in fact, comfortably able to top it. “Each piece of shattered glass will tell him just the same story again when he looks at it, but this time it will be multiplied a hundredfold. I say once more, we are players. Players are bold and truthful, or they are nothing. We are nothing.”

  There were murmurs of assent at this. Jack Wilson nudged me and I nodded at Jack Horner. We were all infused with a sense of the dignity of our trade. Later, in a cooler moment, I was able to see that Burbage and Shakespeare had presented a kind of double act here: while Dick stressed the insecurity of the player’s life (and the consequent requirement to accept just about anything that was on the table), William showed himself an adept at stiffening our sinews and summoning up the blood. We were players; we should be proud; we ought to fear no man. I wondered whether the two shareholders had worked out beforehand who was to say what, or whether they knew each other’s methods so well that they simply fell into this kind of pattern without consulting over it. I wondered too why they were going to all this trouble about a performance for which the Company would receive only forty shillings. We got five times as much for a performance at Court – and got it with royal thanks and without the danger of treason.

  Dick Burbage stepped forward once more. This time he spoke briskly, as if everything were settled. Again he showed his shrewdness here. A pause for more questioning would have allowed for protest, objection.

  “Now we must proceed. Gentleman, please collect your scrolls from the Book-man. Robert Gough will be playing the King and I will be taking the part of Bolingbroke. We begin rehearsing in an hour.”

  The debate was over. It had been over before it began, since I noted that the roles must have been allotted and the scrolls prepared in advance of the meeting. We trooped off to see what Master Allison had for us in the way of parts. Looking round, I found Master WS at my elbow.

  “Oh Nicholas,” he said as if it was a chance encounter. It was only much later that I wondered whether anything, anything, occurred by c
hance in those strange days.

  “Sir,” I said, then, “William.”

  As you can see, I was still thrown into a slight state of confusion in my encounters with WS. He smiled vaguely but his mind seemed elsewhere.

  “You have seen our friend, as I asked?”

  “Yes. In another man’s house, as you asked,” I replied, thinking how easy it was to fall into the cryptic mode.

  “And passed on the words I gave?”

  “Yes,” I said, reflecting now that Master WS must be in an unusually unquiet state of mind to be seeking confirmation that his requests to me had been complied with.

  “Thank you,” said WS.

  “He gave me something for you.”

  “Something?”

  “Four lines.”

  “Lines?” said WS, for all the world as though verse was a foreign language to him.

  “Of verse. They are:

  ‘Lo in the orient when the gracious light

  Lifts up his burning head, each under eye